The radio only puts out milliwatts at 50 and needs an external power amp if I recall correctly
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I joined the cult (New XG-100M owner)
- Thread starter Teotwaki
- Start date
The exciter is rated at 9mw output from 33 to 48MHz on transmit but it will receive the full 30-50MHz.
What he asked was "Is the lowband VHF exciter an option or is it standard in the radio?"
Oh, I don't read any previous posts these days, wastes too much time....
All hardware appears to be in every radio that ships new no matter what options are originally purchased.
RFI-EMI-GUY
Member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2013
- Messages
- 7,039
So does an "option" need to be purchased should one find a random radio on ebay?
You would typically buy a used radio with all the options you would ever need due to the high cost of adding options later. PM me and I can go a little deeper into the subject.
The radio comes with the internal hardware that can can receive low VHF and transmit 9 mW to drive the optional external amplifier module. If you buy a radio you one where the seller lists the options that are turned on. There are threads here listing the options
So trying to get the thread back on track for my radio adventures.
I had an odd event where the radio #2 became stuck in mobile burn app, message on screen was READY MBAP 13.
Surfing on the forum I found a message that was meant for a mobile 7300
Looks like it's stuck at the burnapp screen.
Per FoilOil on Austech:
To get out:
1. Press the down arrow, display will read M:BAPP. Select to load.
2. Press the Opt1 button, display will read M:ECP. Select to load.
3. Press the Menu button, display will read M:ECP. Confirm? N
4. Press the Opt1 button, display will read M:ECP. Confirm? Y
5. Press the Menu button. The radio should reboot to its normal mode.
Playing around it looks like these are the XG100M steps with the exception of 4 happened so quickly it was a key press of either button 7 or button 8 that provided the "Y" answer and rebooted to normal. If anyone has this documented better please share.
"Select to lo" means select to load
1. Press the left paddle down, display will read M:BAPP. Select to lo
2. Rotate the Channel Select knob one click, display will read M:ECP. Select to lo
3. Press the Menu button, display will read M:ECP. Confirm?
4. Press 7 or 8 ; The radio should reboot to its normal mode.
I had an odd event where the radio #2 became stuck in mobile burn app, message on screen was READY MBAP 13.
Surfing on the forum I found a message that was meant for a mobile 7300
Looks like it's stuck at the burnapp screen.
Per FoilOil on Austech:
To get out:
1. Press the down arrow, display will read M:BAPP. Select to load.
2. Press the Opt1 button, display will read M:ECP. Select to load.
3. Press the Menu button, display will read M:ECP. Confirm? N
4. Press the Opt1 button, display will read M:ECP. Confirm? Y
5. Press the Menu button. The radio should reboot to its normal mode.
Playing around it looks like these are the XG100M steps with the exception of 4 happened so quickly it was a key press of either button 7 or button 8 that provided the "Y" answer and rebooted to normal. If anyone has this documented better please share.
"Select to lo" means select to load
1. Press the left paddle down, display will read M:BAPP. Select to lo
2. Rotate the Channel Select knob one click, display will read M:ECP. Select to lo
3. Press the Menu button, display will read M:ECP. Confirm?
4. Press 7 or 8 ; The radio should reboot to its normal mode.
Good stuff. From the serial terminal you could also type ATZ 15 to exit burnapp and load the ECP mode.
Thanks Shawn!
I ran into another interesting problem with a lot of time wasted trying firmware reloads, swapping control heads, looking at the feature codes and changing options in RPM2.
Short story is that I bought two brand new-in-the-box mobile microphones (MC-101616-041) on Ebay and one of them was bad. It was causing this wild unstable tone to go out over the transmitted audio. I contacted the seller and gave him the evidence and he gave me a refund since he was sold out. I did open the mike and there was no obvious issue. There's four surface mount transistors and a bunch of other parts. Will take a while to troubleshoot.
I could actually use a desk mike for one radio so I'm going to shop for a deal on one of those.
Watch Ebay
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2022
- Messages
- 298
I just picked my'n up on ebay. Just make sure it comes with everything!
I'm going to build a six to ten foot long CANBUS cable with shielded twisted pair. I need the Harris connector pinout and so far have not found it in this forum or in any Harris manual that I've pawed through. Feel free to tell me what page I missed reading! 
I'm going to build a six to ten foot long CANBUS cable with shielded twisted pair. I need the Harris connector pinout and so far have not found it in this forum or in any Harris manual that I've pawed through. Feel free to tell me what page I missed reading!
I realized I could simply measure a CANBUS 120 ohm termination plug and also my prebuilt Harris CANBUS cable. Then I could answer my own questions.
Looking into the female connector that's on the radio and control head you have Pin 2 is ground/shield and 1 & 3 are for serial data. The Harris cable is straight through so pin 1 to 1, 2 to 2 and 3 to 3
You beat me to it… I just found my notes… the cable should have a characteristic impedance close to 120ohms. That’s why Harris just used aes/ebu digital audio cable (110ohms). At your proposed distance, it probably won’t matter. Doesn’t need to be super well shielded, but knock yourself out!
-B
Thanks! Since I was in the analytical mode I made a rough mpedence measurement of my twisted pair cable from the garage. Using a 20/80 duty cycle 1 MHz signal and a variable resistor to terminate it, the cable seems to be around 65 Ohms based on watching the rising edge of the signal with a scope. Now it makes sense why we have two 120 ohm terminations, one on the control head and one on the radio since in parallel they are 60 ohms. So now I can move ahead and build a 10 foot cable.
Ya, with 10’, it won’t matter. Characteristic impedance has to do with how the cable is designed. Of course, measuring end to end, the cable should measure ~0 ohms (unless you’re measuring hundreds or thousands of feet), but the cable expects a certain load to maintain the frequency response outlined in its specifications. Not using a cable with the correct characteristic impedance can attenuate a certain range of frequencies, usually manifesting in a rounded square wave on a scope (since the square wave gets it shape from harmonics of the fundamental). But, at such a short distance, you could use old analog telephone cable or analog microphone cable and nobody would be the wiser. The terminations are necessary because the can signal will reflect back down the wire, effectively causing multiple time-delayed signals to be present on the cable at once.
-B
RFI-EMI-GUY
Member
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2013
- Messages
- 7,039
Is there a list of all the possible options and capabilities of this radio?
01 Conventional Priority Scan
02 EDACS 3 Site System Scan
03 Public Address
04 EDACS Group Scan
05 EDACS Priority System Scan
06 EDACS/P25 ProScan (ProSound / Wide Area Scan)
07 EDACS/P25 Dynamic Regroup
08 EDACS/P25 Emergency
09 Type 99 Encode and Decode
10 Conventional Emergency
11 RX Preamp
12 Digital Voice
13 VGE Encryption
14 DES Encryption
15 VGS Encryption - User-defined speech encryption
16 EDACS/P25 Mobile Data
17 EDACS/P25 Status/Message
18 EDACS/P25 Test Unit
19 M-RK I Second Bank
20 OpenSky AES Encryption (128-Bit)
21 EDACS Security Key (ESK) / Personality Lock
22 ProFile
23 Narrow Band
24 Auto Power Control
25 OpenSky Voice
26 OpenSky Data
27 OpenSky OTAR
28 OpenSky AES Encryption (256-Bit)
29 ProVoice
30 Limited Feature Expansion (LPE-50/P5100/P5200/M5300)
31 Smart Battery
32 FIPS 140-2
33 P25 Common Air Interface (CAI) – P25 Conventional
34 Direct Frequency Entry
35 P25 Over-The-Air ReKeying (P25 OTAR)
36 Personality Cloning
37 EDACS/P25 AES Encryption (256-Bit)
38 Radio TextLink
39 P25 Trunking
40 700Mhz Only
41 VHF-Low (35-50)
42 VHF-High (136-174)
43 UHF (380-520)
44 700/800 MHz (Dual Band)
45 DES-CFB
46 Vote Scan
47 Phase II TDMA
48 GPS
49 Bluetooth
50 OMAP Wideband Disable
51 MDC1200 Signaling
52 C-TICK Certified Operation
53 Single Key DES
54 Control and Status Services
55 Link Layer Authentication
56 Motorola Multi-Group
57 TSBK on an Analog Channel
58 Unity Wideband Disable
59 eData
60 InBand GPS
61 Encryption Lite (ARC4)
Note that some features (mostly features <32) don’t really apply to the Unity. The 100M includes those and a few others later in the list as standard. So just because your radio lacks those numbers, it doesn’t mean the feature is unsupported.
READ FIRMWARE RELEASE NOTES to determine what features are standard and what features require a feature encryption.
-B
Edit: Oh and 62 is Single Key AES, which I think is the last feature available for the XG series using this feature encryption system. The XL series introduced a completely new .FSS file for feature distribution.
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